


Castles of the Mind, Fortresses of Bodies

by EgregiousDerp



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Academy/First Order Homophobia, Ask Your Doctor If Kylux Is Right For You, Ben Solo is a Secret and Hux Doesn’t Know, Big Scary Pseudo-Sith Lord is a Lonely Miserably Repressed Virgin, But Also With Porn, But With a Really Slow Build, Dubiously Date-Rape Drug Use, Eventual Conditioning Break AU, Eventual “Get in Losers We’re Going to Overthrow the Government”, Evil Space Boyfriends, General Hux Commanded an Ice Planet and Still Has Zero Chill About Other Dudes, General Hux has Something of an Empathy Deficiency, High Levels of Untagged Kink, Hux Hates Being Gay and Also Hates Everyone Else, Hux POV, Hux is a Conniving Bastard, Hux with both Sadistic and Masochistic Streaks, Interrogation, Kylo Ren Has an Force-Induced Empathy Problem, Like Glacial?, M/M, Mind-Reading Only Goes One Way When You Don’t Have The Force, More tags to be added, Nazi Floor Rug Trope, Non-Consenting Mind-Reading ("mind-rape”), Oh Look It’s Lord Kylo of the Snark Knights of Ren, Past Rape/Non-con, Portrayal of Underaged Sex, Position Switches, Post Episode vii (Contains movie Spoilers even in tags), Repeated Rape Threats/Rape intent/Dubious Rape Fantasising, Sexualized Manipulation, Space Food Is Different, Speciesism, Team “Daddy Issues”, Villains Are Actually Villainous, When Their Powers Combine They Are Captain Hateship, Xenophobia/Imperial Pro-Humanism, You said ‘Strategy and Chill’ Ren, dub-con, if You Kink-Shame the General He Comes Back More Powerful than You Could Possibly Imagine, mind-reading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:23:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgregiousDerp/pseuds/EgregiousDerp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Hux is exceptionally adept in the art of not letting on to what's happening beneath the surface of the mask that allows you to belong.</p><p>Of all the people on this ship who are obscene to see without a mask, Kylo Ren is the worst in need of one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madetobeworthy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madetobeworthy/gifts).



> For Senpai.  
> Am I noticed yet or should I be hollowing out a planet?

—1—

 

He should have known the very moment he was immobilized, Ren would strike.

 

He _had_ known, not that it had prepared him to be spread-eagled against the wall of his own quarters. They were of size to one another, broadly speaking. He had training—not enough as it turned out to wrestle down a lord of the sith, with powers that could only qualify as _cheating_. He’d calculated perhaps for a trick here or there, not for going up against half a dozen people at once. Invisible ones at that.

 

He could pretend it was two, or four different sets of hands holding his limbs like this, if he liked, that there were invisible watchers—not that it would help.

 

That hand lifting up to his face wouldn’t be extended in misguided tenderness—not that he’d expected any in Ren from the start.

 

He’d seen more consideration already than he’d been given reason to suspect existed in the man, considerations that he suspected could be turned into an exploitable weakness if handled within the proper framework.

 

What Kylo Ren’s framework could possibly be eluded him, though.

 

 _If_ such a framework existed in the first place and Ren wasn’t just some surging liquid mass of feelings and whims even now, after the supposed completion of his training.

 

The man’s dark eyes flicked up in too-steady focus, already searching and probing even in the moments before the force licked through him on the wings of Ren’s mistrust-

-Which he’d calculated for, though again, not nearly enough.

 

There was a dark patch of blood on Ren’s wide, downturned mouth, Hux noticed, as his ungloved fingers rested at his temple. Simultaneous thought registered he’d never realized the intimacy of Ren’s probing, had always assumed it was conducted from across a room like a laser scalpel, or that Ren paced restlessly, rotating around the probee like a planet around a sun, catching them off guard. He should have suspected something like this, though. It was very like Kylo Ren to invade the space of those he invaded. Though unlike him, Hux, a strategist above all else, to feel any sympathy for the number of rebels and traitors that had been under Ren’s hand.

 

Still…

 

The unpleasantness of force must be all the more unendurable for one who had no taste or accustoming to it. He felt a twinge of sympathy which surprised him.

 

He put the thought out of his mind quickly enough, though, and it didn’t bother him again.

 

There would be much learned, he supposed. He’d been curious about the nature of the force, even something of a scoffer for a long while. Perhaps this would be the revelation that made all things clear— _if_ he survived, of course.

 

There was always a calculated risk of going irreparably too far with Ren.

 

Of late he’d been under Snoke’s protection, though for how much longer in the wake of Starkiller’s ruin was anyone’s guess. Snoke too was a strategist, and an incredibly vain one. Months of waiting didn’t mean Hux was off the hook, or wouldn’t be punished once his initial usefulness at plying the remaining men was at an end. Hux knew this. He was accustomed to doing his duty even with a sword hanging by a hair over his head.

 

...Flattery, of course, could only get one so far. Flattery and faith thin as Nerf hair.

 

Hux had previously considered himself quite well adapted to twisting brutality to his advantage and living in the cool of its shadow.

 

He’d also seen what was left after Kylo’s interrogations, though, and knew to expect an additional anger beyond the customary if Ren could truly overpower him in his own head. Probably nothing to worry about, but…

 

No amount of study could prepare someone to encounter the force, when they had no talent for it, much less to encounter Ren, its user, with his unpredictable moods. That and he still hadn’t gotten a good read on how intelligent Ren actually was. It only took one such underestimation to ruin even the most carefully laid plan. Better to assume he was capable of reason and _chose_ to do what he did, though the reasons for such a choice remained unfathomable.

 

Hux studied the naked, intent face the instant before his fingers touched him. Reflected on its youth.

 

He thought: He’d invited this, in his own way.

 

He thought: A margin of error was to be expected.

 

Force seized up in him. The experience unique, difficult to place, closer to the irresistibility of a sneeze than to a conscious presence, a full body migraine pressure. Head-crushing, but jangling on the nerves with more of a sense of weight than an actual pain. Enough, nonetheless, to make his eyes swim.

 

Hux forced his breathing slow and even, forced composure.

 

He would _not_ pant or whimper like those wasted, ruined animals in the interrogation rooms.

 

Let Ren deal with the mess if he passed out from lack of air, if his vision darkened

 

He felt Ren notice this, and push an even heavier wave of pressure. Probably just to see if he could be made to burst.

 

Hux just gritted his teeth, and gave him his best level look of scorn.

_Childish._ He thought, hoping Ren heard it.

 

He and Snoke were both proud creatures. Men of vision.

 

Men of vision didn’t stoop to these games.

 

Hux reflected instead that his mind was in peak form, that he kept it that way. His thoughts were seeded with neural inhibitors, and other failsafes in case he ever fell into enemy hands. That was, _if_ what Ren read were really thoughts and memories, rather than accessing feelings to an effect. He could never be quite sure. He was never in the room during interrogations. Any bugging equipment he’d laced a room with went dark within, what he realized now must be that first wave of pressure.

 

…Perhaps that meant it was an actual physical pressure?

 

Hux wondered idly if there were any long term effects. Traitors were typically executed. Those cleared often didn’t last long when brought back to their respective groups. Accidents…happened.

 

He thought again of the bent of the black-clad body crushed against his, of Kylo Ren’s unhelmeted head close to his, his breath wafting down the side of his neck and cheek.

 

Thought, at least Ren’s dramatic displays of intimacy might be good for something…

 

The pressure surged.

 

Their eyes met. Hux did his best to glare him down, to express his contempt towards Ren’s childishly overbearing attempts at intimidation.

 

It should be fairly easy to tell if Ren accessed emotions in this state, Hux noted.

 

If he survived, perhaps he’d remember the intent almost-curiosity on Ren’s face. The lack of rage, of anger. Simple intention. Again, unexpected. He’d _expected_ the rage. Expected impatience, even violence, not this _searching_.

 

There was a stun pistol strapped to his thigh. He’d put it there with some concept of what might happen. Wore it openly, so Ren could see what he was prepared to do, what he merely preferred not to.

 

An idle enough threat.

 

Probably wasted on Ren, anyway. Although… he couldn’t exactly account for the hesitation when there were no real openings to be had.

 

...Unless he was waiting for him to free himself with the force.

 

Which was absolutely _ridiculous_.

 

Hux let the smirk sit on his lips, let Ren see how entirely unfazed he was by his reverence for the old religions.

 

He couldn’t reach the pistol if he wanted to right now, held by the mind, by the intentive, fumbling eyes of Kylo Ren. Possibly they both knew it.

 

Maybe it was the scorn in the smile, or its tightness which proved to be the goad Ren needed.

 

In a moment, it didn’t matter. A harder push and he seized. Shattered. Remembered, like being dragged under, into a forcible dream.

 

* * *

 

 

_-the first glimpse of Kylo without his mask, striding towards supreme Leader Snoke in perfect confidence, knowing he was caught at last. The glimpse of his alarm, and of the dark, non-regulation hair, of the mute surprise on the pale face._

So that’s it.

_The large eyes, nose, and mouth. The blank or too-animated expressions and stares of a person who spent too much time with their face hidden._

_Unmasked, what stood out about him was how much utterly younger he was than Hux had expected._

_He’d pictured a man, cruel of feature, spare of body, emaciated by hate._

_A boy with the lush vulnerability of youth jerked to look at him, then turned away quickly, as though cursing his own exposure. According to his file, Kylo Ren was older. Perhaps thirty. According to research into the ways of the sith, he should have been ravaged by the dark side, already showing signs of decay in his teeth, his eyes, should have been blooming spots along his skin, and withering into a stump of hatred._

_He most certainly had not._

_If anything, he looked maybe five to ten years younger than he was according to his file: with full, shaggy black hair hanging in a sort of mane around blunt features. Wide, supple mouth. Protruding nose. Dark eyes. A pensive, dark set of brows. A resting sort of brooding demeanor that gave way to quick bursts of agitation, and frustration. He had intermittent dark spots on his skin like an outer-rim bumpkin who couldn’t afford proper skin polishing and bleaching, dark and scattered in random constellations on a pale, perfectly clean-shaven face. So clean-shaven Hux had to wonder if he was plucked,_

_Hux savored the steps to his side, didn’t even spare him another glance when he reached him, reporting diligently to Snoke, while Snoke’s eyes glittered down at him with that thinly veiled amusement, that subtle sense of nodding approval, no doubt, enjoying the effect he had on Ren’s discomfort._

_Hux let his memory replay for the details. Let his peripherals capture shapes, capture the more direct glance at Ren’s evident alarm, insisting all the while that the girl he’d tossed all duty aside for was important. Strong in the force—as though that was worth dropping everything you were ordered to do._

Young _. Hux reflected again with distaste, remembering his own appetites and awakenings, remembering their fervent urgency, and how they could dim the focus on what was really important._

_Still, he’d handled it._

_Ren, however, clearly did not, blindly speculating on the importance and power of a nobody like the galaxy depended on her. Which would have been funny if he weren’t so completely oblivious about how undignified he was, how he was flying in the face of every image of fear he’d created about himself, exposing himself on every level possible._

_The victory of his gloating was gone from him long before Ren turned on his heel and fled to bring the scavenger girl to Snoke. It turned to bitterness quickly when Snoke didn’t correct him in his delusions, but accepted them,_ indulged _them, even, by telling him to bring the girl to him._

_Hux could only wonder what fantasy was dancing through Ren’s empty, foolish head to have broken down so completely._

Young _…_

_And, he admitted, dimly, in some animal part of himself, not un-beautiful, with that brooding fragility in the too-open face, devoid of the mask. Even his irritation at Snoke’s mercy couldn’t dull that. The foolishnesss only sold the youth of him that much harder._

_Perhaps it was precisely that flying in the face of the previous images of his grandeur, of his power that made Kylo’s face strangely striking._

_Perhaps it was his staring too hard, or not at all, completely unaware that his unmasked features could be read—a thing Hux already appreciated in his occasional sampling of the troopers._

_The cold, impulsive lord he’d pictured beneath the helmet hadn’t stirred him except with spite, with casual fantasies and ruminations. But this…_

_He breathed in once in actuality, as Snoke directed him according to his vision, steadied himself imperceptibly._

_Hux wasn’t a man incapable of acquiring the things he wanted, or of hiding how they affected him when they did._

_Kylo Ren simply presented more of a challenge, he decided._

_He thought of pushing the boy down on his knees, of that wide mouth on him, doing as he willed it to, and smiled a little._

_He’d wanted and acquired the distilled sense of ‘young’ before._

_The only difference would be in the disposal._

_Snoke’s eyes on him seemed to indicate their approval, seemed to goad him onwards,_

_Death of the republic first._

_Inquiry into the youth of Kylo Ren after._

* * *

 

The pressure and the hand settled briefly. Kylo Ren is frowning hard in distaste.

 

        “I’m not, you know.” Ren says slowly, as though piecing some idea together with terrific effort, the frown still heavy over his features, the only thing different is the deep scar slashing up his neck and face.

 

He paces now, turning on his heel. There’s a casual mixture of grace and fumbling about him without the mask, a sense of withdrawing and melancholy, of being somehow turned inward into his own world.

 

        “We’re almost the same age, I’ve read your file, too.”

 

Hux scoffs, tests whether he can move his fingers in the grip of the invisible hands over them, over him.

 

He can’t.

 

        “Don’t flatter yourself that chronology and _experience_ are one and the same, Ren.”

 

The other man just nods slightly to himself, eyes turned back to the ground in some private thought.

 

        “…I’ll admit I’ve wondered how to pronounce your first name since I read it,” Ren remarked.

 

He had a soft, reasonable, low voice outside his helmet, all the more so when he closed distance, softening it further, as if confiding something to you and you alone,

 

        “Perhaps you’d like to tell me...?” He trailed off a moment, fingers almost absently undoing the fastening for Hux’s collar.

 

It’s a tiny overstepping. A tiny exposure.

 

        “I could always find it myself, anyway.” He glances up at Hux from where he’s spreading with his fingers to expose vulnerable throat. His face is completely non-threatening, almost confiding, “You could save me some time,”

 

The thrill of alarm is brief, but undeniably real, at its utter disconnect from anything. Hux is confident he catches the emotion before it snakes out onto his face or body, that the look he gives back is icy, deadly as the Starkiller base. But for the brief moment it takes for Kylo to undo a hook, a flash of what could be comes over him-

-Before Hux’s training and discipline kick in, his _anger_ at the use of such a base intimidation, his quiet tinge of admiration.

 

It’s a _masterful_ touch in its own way.

 

He was right not to make assumptions of Kylo’s cleverness.

 

Kylo goes no further, fingers resting just lightly against the minute vee of skin, studying him.

 

The threat. The brag.

_You know I can take whatever I want._

 

How many times has he heard _that_ one from outside the interrogation room?

 

Often, ultimately, yes, it comes true one way or the other.

 

There’s a soft, slight edge deep in the pit of Hux’s stomach, training and anger or not. If there’s one thing he knows that Kylo Ren doesn’t it’s that he’s far from helpless.

_I might just let you_.

 

Here it’s clear on which levels Kylo means it, even as his soft, ungainly, slightly homely face continues not to look capable of such a threat. He has hair in his eyes, half over the livid red scar where the scavenger girl fought back. Hux knows better.

 

Hux weighs his options,

 

He _could_ take whatever he wanted, and maybe, just maybe Hux’s mind won’t figure a way around it.

 

Maybe this will all go dreadfully wrong,

 

Hux peels his lips back in a hard sneer. The young Lord’s breath is close enough he can feel it gusting the small hairs on the side of his neck, can smell its slight sourness.

 

He considers that it’s probably not yet clear to Kylo Ren precisely what he wants. Perhaps that is the point of attack he’ll have to take.

 

        “’Gen-e-ral’ I think you’ll find it’s pronounced.” Hux sounds out, leadening the syllables with a continued, generous portion of his best and most withering scorn.

 

Kylo’s eyes narrow slightly. His fingers slip into Hux’s collar, finding his pulse with the tip of a thumb, a gentle touch.

 

Hux doesn’t let it fool him. He’s seen entire rooms destroyed, good people throttled because Kylo Ren didn’t get what he wanted when he wanted it. Dark eyes study his, probing for effect, wasting his time.

 

        “Perhaps you’ve spelt it wrong,” Hux adds, all but spitting the words.

 

        “Perhaps.” Kylo murmurs, there’s a tiny glimmer of amusement, of interest in his eye. A brush of the hand, a shallower pressure that makes his teeth itch.

 

He looks intently again at Hux’s eyes, his face like he’s measuring his features, noticing each one in turn instead of seeing the whole face like other people do.

 

He finds nothing. Hux is sure of it. There’s nothing to find.

 

_Threats of force only break what is breakable,_

 

His mind is a battlestation.

 

His body…

...will heal, if brutalized.

 

He meets Kylo’s eye, unflinching, feeding him starkiller’s ice, starkiller’s fire.

 

The frown in Kylo’s brow knits a little deeper.

 

        “I could do anything to you that you would have done to me. Wouldn’t that be poetic?” He threatens softly, with a lacing note of almost-regret.

 

Now Hux gives a bark of humorless laughter. _There_ —he’d called it. Kylo probably doesn’t even know _how_ to make good on all that posturing.

 

        “It would be shockingly unoriginal.” Hux replies, “I’ll give you that.”

 

Kylo’s threats are ham-fisted, fumbling. _Unrefined_ , as always. Hux tests his fingers again, makes no noticeable leeway, smiles, hard and brittle,

 

        “Why don’t you release me, and let me do it to you myself?”

 

        “Mm. No. I think not,” Kylo sounds distracted. The minor pressure is back, too shallow for Hux to peer in on what he’s finding. He thinks about the pleasingly coarse texture of Kylo’s hair, of wrenching it, and biting again into that swollen lip. Thinks hard, focused thoughts of want.

 

He sees Kylo’s eyes briefly glaze, blink, and dart away to the side, the pressure lifting. The fingers in his collar also slip away.

 

A tiny quirk lifts the corner of Hux’s lip.

_So it works with emotions, too. How very like Ren to lack any degree of control at all._

 

The soldiers on-base are all virtually sexless, save for the brief moments they lift their helmets in the mess hall, or sleep in their tiny doubled-up quarters.

 

And Ren ran after the first girl he saw the _moment_ he saw her. Throttled a terrified officer even at the mention of her gender, her _involvement_.

 

Hux resists the impulse to goad him, but only barely.

 

A flit of anger passes over Kylo’s face even so, as though he heard the check, or, perhaps, simply realized what he’d done.

 

His hand stretches out, the pressure washing in like a responding tide, sweeping and obliterating Hux, knocking him under again into darkness.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a total of two people who've seen the later bits of this for storyline beta. 
> 
> One offered an opinion that this really should be upped to an E-rating, and the other asked me if a sex scene in a later chapter was supposed to be so humorous.  
> ...This pretty much sets the tone for my entire life.
> 
> Neither is responsible for my grammar, or my neglect to mention this is in fact a chapter fic. (Which broke the 50k mark in my copy just yesterday, in fact.) It's similarly not formatted properly since for some reason the block quotes are the only way to replace the quote panels after the copy process. (EDIT: I'm attempting regular spacing and it seems to be working. I apologize to anyone who had to read the previous version. It felt kind of awful to the kind folks who put the fic on update alert to delete the chapter just because I was under time constraint at the moment of posting.)
> 
> Thank you all for you patience. Please bear with me. Technology isn't my friend, not to mention my grammar has never been particularly rigid.
> 
> Notably, the rating has been bumped to "E" in anticipation of later chapters, and I'd like to point out some of those extensive tags are there for more than humor. Please be safe, people.
> 
> And, if you are safe, please enjoy.

—2—

 

_The weight of a body over his shoulder feels like an old training exercise as the ice crumples about them._

_He’s out of practice._

_Not as out of practice as Ren might think, which is a mercy for the both of them. Hux is stronger than he looks, even if he’s never been the person all eyes lock on as the clear, obvious force of terror in the room. That role’s been left for Ren, for Phasma. More subtle strength has always suited him better. Enough that he sometimes wished himself shorter, even if height was good for an appearance of leadership. Tradeoffs…_

_It’s easier to destroy something when it suits you if nobody expects it of you._

_He'd carried a pack the weight of a man fairly regularly, once._

_Kylo Ren is a large man, though, heavier than he looks, and Hux is out of practice._

_He manages._

_He’d preferred the cold of this place, he recognizes, dimly, even though it sometimes felt as though he could never get warm, would never know warmth again. It had hollowed and numbed him, kept his mind clear. These were his last moments to really savor it, sharp breaths gusting and biting into his lungs with every step, the young Lord’s cloth-draped body steaming hot over his shoulder like a slaughter-calf. Dead meat._

_He can feel the hiss of pain Ren gives with every step, the stickiness of blood against his cheek, the copper, unclean tang of blood, and pine against his tongue when he breathes, the cutting harshness of his own breathing, his own refusal to lessen his pace despite he stitch in his side, or the ache of his shoulders._

_Shot._

_He could already see the evidence of Ren’s injuries, could guess that the burns at both shoulders, and the wicked wound at his knee were from sabers._

_Elegant weapons. Though where that scavenger girl would have gotten one could be anybody’s guess._

_The wound in Ren’s side is a brutal, bleeding hole. Saber wounds don’t bleed usually. It’s something else. What, he has no idea. He's seen Ren stop cannon fire with nothing but a wave of his hand._

_Ren wouldn’t even look at him, half-delirious with shock, staring at the sky, choking out his breaths, only trying to hide the livid mark marring his features, his shame._

_The scavenger girl had left him his life, Hux noted._

_There had been no other bodies, no other blood._

_Kylo Ren. Kylo I-tear-a-ship-apart-just-because-you-brought-me-news-I-don’t-like Ren had gone_ easy _on his opponent._

_Hux’s gut curled in contempt, in cold, black anger even at the thought._

_He’s also accustomed to controlling the appearance of that anger that simmers in him, channeling it, like the rays of the sun in bright, lancing red beams…_

_(He will_ not _crumble like the snowy crust beneath his feet.)_

_He turns that fury into strength, spurring himself onwards._

_What business was it for a lowly scavenger to leave Kylo Ren his life? A man whose presence was known and feared throughout the galaxy? What business was it of Ren’s to_ let _her do this to him?_

_He knew Ren well enough, himself. His moods, his brooding, his insufferable petulance…_

_That young, vulnerable face turned up unseeing and sickly white to the sky…_

_Hux threw Kylo down on the grating of the gangplank upon reaching the shuttle, mood as black as it had been in who knew how long._

_There was a flash of orange in his vision, a brief glimpse of a stranded pilot lucky enough to escape the turbolasers who must have thought the stranded shuttle would be his salvation. The brief flash of astonishment in his face, before Hux’s pistol lifted without thought, firing once._

_Hux’s memory fills in tiny details. Snow in dark hair. The incredulous alarm. The rebel isn’t a handsome man._

 

_The murder is entirely unnecessary._

 

_There's simply no one there to stop him, nothing long term to do with this, nobody to know, and that feels important and right at the time._

_He kicks the body off his ship without ceremony, dumping it in the snow and keeps going, furious, and almost light without the crushing weight of Kylo Ren’s failure pressing down on him._

_Ren is insensible by the time they gave a rocky liftoff, only giving a sharp huff of pain, no other noise._

_Part of Hux is pleased by this display of dignity, of pride in who he is, not expressing his pain more loudly. That wasn’t the part of him that was in control once they’d taken off and achieved autopilot for the hyperspace run to the_ Finalizer, _safely leaving the crumbling surface of Starkiller base behind._

_Ren wasn’t feigning unconsciousness as it turned out, didn’t stir even at the click of boots on steel. His exposed face looks betrayed in sleep, vulnerable, with his head pillowed on one arm, the forearm over his face, over the fresh, livid burn, the shock-pale lips slightly parted._

_A coward’s position._

_Hux sharply kicked the prone knight in the side, aiming with the point of his toe so it connected hard with the oozing mess._

_Ren choked a yell, hair fallen all over his face, pale with sweat and strain. Utter hatred colored his eyes as he oriented. He reached-_

_Hux stepped sharply on his hand. Felt a tiny, satisfying snap._

_Ren gave another animal howl._

_His arms barely lifted him up. He couldn’t even rise to fight back, swiping a hand for the boot, face snow-white, sick with shock. Hux shifted it out of the way, sneering down at him, as Ren cradled himself, eyes hollow and staring, hazy with pain._

_“Supreme Leader Snoke has requested your presence.”_

_He dropped the two pieces of Ren’s broken lightsaber down beside him at that, watched the realization dawn on his pale, bloodied face._

_Ren’s breathing rasped heavy, and strained in the close quarters, staring at him as though his words were foreign. He reached out to the saber, struggled, not even close._

_Hux looked down on him, on his pathetic straining to no end. Nothing of his anger showed in his face, of that he was sure. Nothing but his contempt. He hated the openness of Kylo Ren’s face, staring back up at him with its naked, shifting despair, fear, and fury. Its naked pain, its wordless plea for mercy._

_Its weakness._

_He hated most of all that someone_ else _had done this to him first._

_He settles his boot on one of the two pieces, squeezes slightly._

_“I suggest you be the first to inform him that you chose to fight at less than full effect. Or else find some other presentable reason for being the only person in that field when I found you.”_

_He kicks the larger cross-section of the saber as he turns, hearing it skitter, hears Ren rasp something unintelligible after him._

_He didn’t (_ doesn’t _?) bother to patch Ren up._

_Didn’t (_ doesn’t _?) bother to continue the conversation._

 

(-the tenses in his mind waver, as though on the borderline between sleep and waking-)

_The medics carry Ren off his shuttle when they arrive at the_ Finalizer _. Hux won’t even touch him, barely even bothers to inform them he has a passenger, because of all the people on that planet who just died, even the rebel pilot trying to steal his shuttle was probably more worthy of life than Kylo Ren._

_Truthfully, in the face of such failure, he expects to never see him again, for Supreme Leader Snoke’s call to finish Ren’s training to be the end of their time working together, if not the end of Ren himself._

_He fully expects replacement or death himself for what’s happened to the base, to his men, his responsibility._

_The only sleep he expects to lose over this particular rival, this particular and grim future, might fall to a few moments replaying the depraved, weakened crawl Ren does, grasping for Hux’s heel even as he leaves, too weak, apparently, to even call his precious force to aid him._

_Hux doesn’t touch him._

_Doesn’t coddle him._

_Doesn’t mourn the loss of what might have been._

_He doesn’t even indicate his awareness that Ren reaches for him._

_He knows the place of the feelings for Ren that he has, and knows well that they’re constructed of equal parts lust and loathing, nothing more significant._

_As far as he’s concerned, this is the end of their work together._

_As far as the threat to his own life is concerned, he has a duty. He is a soldier. An officer. He’ll carry on until such a time as Snoke destroys him, discards him._

_He’ll do that duty._

_Never mind they ran halfway across the galaxy for a piece of a map to a dangerous rebel, and got sidetracked into Ren’s stupid emotional hunt for a worthless girl who’s destroyed him and left him still living—_

_for now._

_His responsibilities and his consequences are his and his alone. Raging at Kylo Ren for possibly killing them both won’t make a lick of difference when those consequences come to bear._

_The planet is breaking to pieces beneath them, a new, smaller sun taking its place: A Miracle._

_…One that will slowly destroy all the remaining planets in that entire system, that will draw them in to death by fire, spin them out into space and leave them cold, will suck the atmosphere right off them-_

_-And somewhere out there as he thinks that, he knows some republic_ scum _is making a victory speech about the gloriousness of the light, understanding nothing._

_Hux will never feel Starkiller’s chill, perfect, frozen clarity again, will never scream another speech on its surface before a gathered mess of men whose hearts beat as one. He will never look out of the carefully crafted transparisteel viewports onto the clear, cold landscape, with its barren beauty._

_He’ll be sitting in his quarters, waiting for casualty reports for close to a week. Will wait and try to plot out countermeasures, to carry on as efficiently as he would in any other time. He’ll have four days before discovering Captain Phasma is alive, that she’s been living off sewage water and trash in a waste barge dangerously close to the new sun for that time. She’ll be in radiation detox for another forty-eight hours, saved from death only by the unique plating of her armor._

_Neither of them will talk about it, or express even the slightest bit of relief at the other being alive, though they’ve known one another for almost half a lifetime, possibly more than that in a time of war, respective to one another’s relative lifetimes. There’s too much work for that, and neither he nor Phasma generally have to waste words—tone, or significant looks being largely sufficient by now. Phasma has requested transfers under him since he himself was a captain. He’s requested her personally whenever she’s been absent for almost as long._

_It’s useful to have someone who thinks they owe you something._

_That’s not all of it, of course, but it's a large part of it for him._

 

_They aren't friends._

 

_Hux respects her._

_She refuses painkillers as they work her through bacta treatment, fair, short hair bubbling up above her head. Her formerly pale skin is still ruined, will have to be micrografted back to wholeness, treated with dermal and gene regressant therapies. She’ll return to normal, perhaps, eventually, but for now, she looks like a chewed piece of flesh. Her pale eyes focus on him perfectly when he checks on her on his rounds, though. She’s aware, waiting impatiently to go back to work and make the Resistance pay for everything they’ve done. He sees the anger, the pride in her eyes, and knows she still hasn’t broken, not once._

_Hux imagines Snoke doesn’t even know Phasma exists._

_The finest soldier under his command—often his opposing shift, because she’s too valuable to waste on the sentiment of active duty together, and because Phasma likes to roam, has always liked to roam. He lets her wander wherever she pleases, within comm range—a trust Hux has never granted lightly. And if he notices her on the bridge regarding him as he goes about his business, well, that’s hers._

_It’s close to having a bodyguard._

_The closest thing he’s had to a friend in a very long time. Still, definitely, not one._

_Before FN-2187’s defection, they hadn’t so much as spoken in weeks, spoke about the business of running the ship when they did, comfortable in the silence of shared history, the old, largely silent debates and reports about how best to shape the men under them—not a rivalry, not a source of bitterness, but a shared passion as his bickering with Ren never was._

_He admires that unshakeability about her even as he sets her reconstructed armor back on the table where she can see it, along with a medal there’s no time to have a proper ceremony for. He can see by the blaze in her eyes in that wrecked, rawhide face that she wants to throw it back at him for even taking the time and setting it there personally when he should be elsewhere._

_Hux smiles, tightly, for the first time since x-wings broke the atmosphere of Starkiller Base and began killing good men, and leaves to go where he’s more urgently needed._

_Not for the first time, Hux quietly wishes Phasma were a man, or, barring that, that he were a man of more conventional tastes himself._

_They’ll be trying to scavenge pods and half-frozen men out of the short-range fighters they fled in for close to two weeks. Hux will be busy visiting the hospital wing of the ship, silently trying to salvage the morale that’s broken along with Starkiller base more than for any actual purpose of mercy. Phasma will be up sooner than the medical droids like, unhonored, and unrecognized for her sacrifice under her armor, reshaping the memories of every man and woman on-board to best advantage._

_Her chrome armor is never again quite as gleaming as it was before._

_She’ll leave him a cup of stimleaf and say nothing when he doesn’t sleep for two days, struggling for a proper counter-angle to strike the resistance with, and a way to make sense of the data reports on some renegade named Maz Kanata who’s building an army of mercenaries and warriors for hire apparently in response to some minor military skirmish involving his men._

_She wouldn’t accept thanks for it._

 

_He doesn’t bother giving them, feeling her leveling a look at him as though she knows he’s thinking gratitude in her direction when there’s work to be done, and no time to waste on even a hidden smile into the rim of the glass once the surprise wears off._

_Phasma is far from prone to bouts of sentiment, or even the slightest hint of coddling._

_What she does isn’t kindness, it’s a warning his mask is wearing thin over his rage no matter how calmly he tells the troopers to raze a Resistance outpost to the ground, to refuse to back down in the face of defeat._

_Phasma is wordlessly remarking on something other than his mere tiredness._

_She doesn’t tolerate anyone who can’t wear a mask._

_He reaffixes his own._

_Phasma is owed that much at least._

 

 _They all are, trying to tell themselves that they destroyed a_ system _of planets for the one the Resistance took from them. Billions of lives in exchange for millions of troops._

_They’ll be trying to make it all worthwhile._

_And in that, Hux will have no time to deal with Kylo Ren, will be grateful not to have one more spare bit of sabotage throwing a spanner in the works while he’s trying to fix the wounded engine._

_There’s still a war on._

_As far as he’s concerned, Kylo Ren is well and truly fucked in the bed he’s made for himself._

_Maybe they all are._

* * *

 

Anger burns in Kylo Ren’s eyes as Hux resurfaces.

 

        “Fucked.” He repeats slowly.

 

Hux doesn’t even bother dignifying the word with a reply, an elaboration.

 

He called Ren here to _be_ fucked.

 

The young lord’s fingers find one of Hux’s outstretched ones, He’s gentle with them, seeming to admire the effect of his fingers latticed against Hux’ with a flickering of gaze. Hux notes that his hands are smooth, the fingertips solid with calluses although they shouldn’t be. A saber is a weightless blade. And yet, the fingers are hard and smooth, as Ren lifts his hand easily, as though nothing’s holding it there at all, tracing along Hux’s wrist.

 

Hux allows no hint of anything into his face in all of this.

 

Kylo slides the fingers over his lips, the bloodied bit of lower lip catching the skin just a little, and murmurs as he does, in that soft, almost absent voice,

 

        “...Tell me something that’s to stop me from breaking your wrist so you never use it again.”

 

There’s a swift beat of utter silence,

 

Hux is chilled, but only very briefly this time, and not nearly as deeply. Admires, again, very briefly, the technique.

 

        “You survived,” he intones, with barely a pause.

 

Kylo’s eyes lift to him again, a breath of contempt whiffing over the back of his wrist.

 

Even with one hand, Hux reminds himself, he’ll still be a general. He too will survive.

 

All of them. They’ve survived.

 

Kylo releases his fingers.

 

The sharp impact of the back of Ren’s hand against Hux’s cheek makes the room briefly spin, more from shock than from the two-second delay of pain. He feels the beginnings of the welt even as he furiously tries to orient. There’s a power even to the careless, effortless blow that leaves him reeling, as invisible force snaps his hand back as surely as if it were manacled.

 

        “Of course I survived,” Kylo says softly, as though speaking patiently, to a not-too-bright child.

 

        “If you’ll bother remembering, I did you the courtesy of warning what to expect fr-“

 

He’s cut off by the wrench of Kylo ripping two fastenings open on his uniform.

 

Hux grimaces, rolls his eyes, tries to feign his indifference to the knuckles bunched white in the fabric. Kylo pauses in the silence that follows. Whatever flash of anger that was there buries itself, lingering under the surface. His smooth fingers probe the inside of the opening, his thumb tracing the hollow under Hux’s collarbone.

 

Hux could be carved from ice, for all the reaction he allows the casual violence, the disordering.

 

Again, he quietly admires the technique, admitting that it did at least affect even him a little.

 

        “You are a tall man, General, and cast a long shadow, but your body is far from powerful," Kylo’s hands slip up around his throat, circling it, as though testing the feel of it in his hard fingers.

 

        “I’ll be the judge of that,” Hux replies, glowering at him.

 

        “I see. So you expect gratitude for your warnings, then?”

 

Ren’s question is still absent, posed with a different sort of indifference. The part of even his hair was data that revealed who he was, betraying him. Hux notes it silently, controls his rage at being interrupted, at being _threatened_ by a man who’s technically a subordinate in a way. An outsider. Beneath him. Should be beneath him.

 

Kylo Ren has no concept of being a part of something greater than himself and his own feelings.

 

A minor wave of pressure shifts just behind Hux’s temples.

 

       “I don’t _expect_ gratitude to be included in your limited repertoire of self-centered emotionality," Hux replies, thinking savagely hard about twisting Kylo’s nipples, of biting the pale hollow of his throat until the skin broke, of welting trails into the meat of his back with his nails until peeled skin and blood collected under them in dirty, rusty crescents.

 

He thought he felt a quiver in the breath against his cheek as Kylo’s reading pressure quickly flicked away.

 

        “Have you found evidence in favor of my ingratitude?” Ren asked, intent, inspecting a mole just to the right of Hux’s sternum. He flicks open another of the fastenings down the front of Hux’s uniform, one-handed, runs a warm, smooth hand over the flat of his belly, inspects him seemingly for a reaction.

 

       “Give me my hands back, and I’ll show you precisely the meaning of gratitude,” Hux growls, hating briefly that he does in fact have a reaction to curb. He slicks his tongue along the back of his teeth, unseen, inside his mouth, simmers, contemplating revenge with Kylo’s index finger pointed at his voicebox, his thumb on his pulse.

 

Kylo’s eyes lift, meet his glare. He blinks slowly, searching Hux’s eyes with seeming interest again, as though trying to decide whether to read him or not.

 

There can’t possibly be a gap in his facial neutrality. For good measure, he sends Kylo the filthiest come-ons he can think of, orders him to slip his hands down under his belt, and take him in hand, To get on his knees and be useful for once.

 

Kylo’s lack of reaction can only mean he isn’t listening. _Well great…_

        “You have remarkable skin,” Kylo says instead, still looking intently at Hux’s eyes, his features. His upturned face is still young-looking. Somehow all the more so with that scar. The scar should have wrecked it, made him intimidating. It doesn’t, instead advertising victimhood.

 

Hux faces him with full ice.

 

        “So I’ve been told.”

 

Kylo’s gaze doesn’t waver, then flicks down. He flicks the upper edge of Hux’s jacket more open, flicks it back again, bounding on the balls of his feet slightly like it’s a game. He frowns slightly, head cocking to the side with a twist.

 

        “There have been others before me, others you’ve approached," It wasn’t a question.

 

        “Of course.”

 

Kylo ran a fingertip lightly up Hux’s sternum, glanced eye contact,

 

       “…Many?”

 

 _This_ , Hux was sure would be the question that not to answer would lead to the broken wrist. It was in the way Ren’s eyes didn’t waver.

 

It wasn’t a high stakes question to him in the slightest. He was nonetheless aware that to Kylo it had the thrust of something important. It was simply because it seemed to _mean_ something to Kylo, that he was tempted to spitefully not answer at all.

 

        “Enough,” he replies evenly.

 

Kylo seemed to digest this, slowly,

 

        “All ‘young’ I suppose.”

 

His voice was striving for casual. Failing. He had no training in steadying his face to protect him without his mask, and something in the answer was angering him, darkening his eyes.

 

        “Some quite young,” Hux replied without the slightest hesitation or remorse, he watched what that response did to mix the emotions in Kylo’s eyes, “Fourteen, for the youngest. Is that what you wanted to know, Ren? The limits of my capacity for depravity?”

 

He doesn’t mention that that particular liaison took place during his own training. That he was seventeen himself. That he murdered the boy and made it look like the handiwork of a rival, brilliant, terrible sixteen-year-old girl, washing her out of the program on a wave of court martial for murder, ascending the ranks in the academy simultaneously… His graduation.

 

None of it was necessary. There would have been other, more obvious washouts. It simply felt necessary, important.

 

Instead, he watches Kylo look at him as a predator, the glimmer of revulsion, and astonishment in his naked face.

 

It isn’t a particularly inaccurate assessment.

 

        “You’ll be on the older end of things, but don’t worry,” it comes out hard, brittle, “you have the _look."_

 

He watches Kylo lift a hand to his face without thinking, and force it away after he notices himself doing it. Watches another, deeper flicker of anger pass over his face at having been riled.

 

        “The scar doesn’t matter to me,” Hux hears himself add. He stops.

 

Unnecessary.

 

That was…unnecessary. Personal. Gave something.

 

Kylo seems as alarmed by it as he is, struck mute, slowly lowering his fingers, then lifting them outstretched before Hux’s face.

 

Hux prepares for the pressure.

 

Kylo… _hesitates_.

 

What the _Hell_ …?

 

It makes him wonder briefly, if he’s slipped too, if there was some flinch, some visible bracing, if he’s exposed himself even more than he knows,

 

      “Feel free, I have plenty of suggestions while you’re here saving me the trouble of undressing,” Hux intones, rolling his eyes.

 

       “Is this what it takes to get you to answer a direct question?” Kylo asks.

 

Hux barks another laugh. It’s humorless.

 

        “ _These_ aren’t direct questions.”

 

He can think of a few. _Have you considered my offer? Will you bend for me, Ren? Will you beg and cry?_ Kylo Ren is not a human being whose whims and wants concern him particularly.

 

Kylo shakes his head with an irritable toss, sighs hard through his nose.

 

        “I’m _asking_ if it’s necessary to go through your mind, or if you’ll tell me what I want.”

_There’s_ the impatience. Hux has never been more pleased to see it, even as irritated as he is, himself.

 

        “I can’t remember the last time you actually did something that was _necessary_ , Ren.”

 

Annoyance crosses the other’s face. He’s probably about to repeat himself a third time, or maybe resort to more violence, in typical Ren fashion whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, or feels particularly misunderstood. Hux interrupts his ramp-up.

 

        “The only things you’ll find in my head are things _I_ want.”

 

He stares him down. They’re evenly appraising for a time. It’s Ren who looks away first. Hux thinks he actually sees a flush begin in his ears, half-hidden by his hair. He even steps back a pace, looking at the floor as though searching his own feelings might give him some shred of guidance, seeming, for lack of a better word, _confused_.

 

Hux is actually surprised that Kylo’s had as good a record for interrogations as he has. The mask must have helped tremendously. Without it, he’s learning as much as Kylo is learning about him.

 

If Kylo still thinks interrogation is all about merely the questions one asks, he’s in for a rude awakening someday. Hux considers whether or not instead of bombarding him with smut, he should just lay out a listing in his head of all the ways Kylo Ren advertises his virginity or near-to virginity and _pathetic loneliness_ to anyone who so much as gives him the time of day. That it’s _precisely_ that which gives him the sense of youth that Hux has such a palate and occasional craving for.

 

Maybe instead he should list off all the ways Kylo’s threats undermine his own intimidation. That a man who threatens to take what he wants is ultimately less terrifying than a man who _takes_ and doesn’t have to talk himself up to it.

 

Part of him wants Kylo Ren to see all the efficient brutality of him, and to see his lacking firsthand.

 

He thinks it might be beautiful even, if Kylo wept.

 

Hux prides himself on being a man who always takes.

 

He tests the movement of his fingers again, feels the _shift_ as the fingers of his right hand give a minute flex.

 

Kylo doesn’t seem to have noticed.

 

        “No… you…” Kylo frowns hard, “You hate me.”

 

“Well of _course_ I hate you,” Hux snaps," Don’t tell me that you’ve lost your nerve so quickly over something so inconsequential as my hatred for you, Lord Ren.”

 

The shaggy, dark head lifts. Ren’s features surge between confusion and disgust.

 

        “That doesn’t…”

 

        “Doesn’t _what_ , Ren? Doesn’t _connect_ in that empty little head of yours that you can hate someone and still want to fuck them?”

 

Ren bites his lip. His nostrils flare. He looks again to be barely containing his legendarily short temper, apparently coming to some decision with himself. He straightens.

 

Hux feels the impact of the gesture deep in the pit of his stomach. It’s suddenly very, very important to him that Ren chews the skin off his lip when he’s furious, that his nails are ragged and torn off on the hand that lifts to him, that he looks better, more alive with anger flashing in his eyes than he does when he’s moody and brooding.

 

Hux prepares for the pressure.

 

Kylo…hesitates again, then quietly leans his forehead against Hux’s. That too is _important,_ is far too disgustingly exposed, and vulnerable for him. Hux very briefly, very intensely, hates him for this weakness, for the glance Kylo gives his eyes and lips, the almost painful consideration. The fact he seems to have to _think_ about it when he’s this ball of poorly contained impulses, while Hux practices control in all things, and still…

 

And…

 

Still.

 

It disgusts him profoundly that Kylo Ren has no natural inclination to take, that he _hesitates_ at the worst moment _._

 

The transition is much gentler this time, gradual as falling asleep, the pressure much less head-crushing, and jolting, as if Ren wants him to believe he can be gentle, can be docile. As though the man who’s nearly killed people for identifying the _genders_ of a group of rebels still can’t believe in desire and hate being interconnected.

 

As though he believes Hux must be lying about the cohabitation of hatred and desire for intimacy.

 

It is, of course, entirely beside the point.

 

\--a brief flash lights his eyelids

 

* * *

 

 

 _Ren is carving up an instruments panel, metal screaming, and attendants fleeing their posts. Disorder. Sheer, bloody, appallingly_ senseless _disorder. Lieutenant Mitaka looks close to tears, frozen in place like a bug-eyed baby Nerf—he always did have the worst luck. There have been incidents before, but none of them this out there, this in his face. On his own bridge, in front of him._

_Hux’s voice is already raw from shrieking at him, hardly even hearing what he himself is saying, something in the key of-_

 

_“LORD REN YOU WILL CEASE DESTROYING FIRST ORDER PROPERTY THIS INSTANT OR I WILL HAVE YOU ESCORTED BY FORCE FROM THIS BRIDGE AND PLACED IN THE BRIG DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR”_

_Ren stops suddenly, panting. His shoulders heave quietly up and down for a moment. His helmeted face turns back._

_“General,” He manages somehow to speak his title like it's his personal name, seems very nearly calm as his mask hisses an exhale, a mild-sounding reply, “That sounds almost like a threat.”_

_Hux does the most audacious thing he can think of, short of pulling his weapon and trying to shoot Ren in the head—which he wants to do, anyway, and rather dearly from the moment that black-enclosed, poorly finished mask turned to him, since the deep voice barely acknowledged him, at first seeming to carry all the aloofness and grace of his title, before he’d read the hint in the impatient, lurching footfalls, before the first damage report had come in from the first interrogation chamber and the medical crew had cleaned up the burst of gore from the head of a particularly stubborn duro-_

_He’s since seen footage of Kylo Ren, lord of the knights of Ren holding men and women aloft by the throats without touching them, has seen him freeze energy beams in mid-air, and slice through objects like butter with that crackling, unstable red blade._

 

_He has been neither impressed nor moved to act until now._

_This is the third time Hux has spoken to him at all, even, in more than polite acknowledgement of his presence in passing, the first time he has ever even raised his voice, despite the damage and the casualties, despite wondering what the Hell Snoke is thinking sending this barely contained menace on board his pristine vessel._

_This is the moment which will define all their later encounters. He knows that in his bones._

_What he actually does is close distance with him until he’s standing right in front of the outstretched arm, in front of the crackling red lightsaber._

_Because his men are terrified._

_But mostly because he will not have his orders questioned on his ship._

_Because if Ren wins this one he might as well hand the_ Finalizer _over to him, might as well give up his position._

 

_He's furious of course._

 

_But also...excited._

_It’s the first time he clearly recognizes they are in fact rivals for a position, that this goad directed to him acknowledges him as a_ threat _. That Kylo Ren is_ testing him _because he, a man of less significant and flashy gifts makes him_ uncomfortable _. His mere existence has done something to goad him to act._

 

_It makes his blood sing just to think of what this says Snoke thinks of him in private, to be singled out for rivalry by one so ostentatiously powerful. Hux is accustomed to appraisal by the quality of his enemies more than the caliber of his allies._

 

_What it says about him to have attained this one..._

_He gazes on the untamed, reckless powerhouse of a man, swathed in black before him and....stands there, with his arms locked behind his back, glaring into the eye pits of Ren’s mask, which turns to point right at him, seemingly in interest. There’s a slight tilt to it as he peers at him._

_“No.” Hux says. And he makes sure to make his reply sound just as mild, just as relaxed as Ren’s, “I think you’ll find, lord Ren, that you will simply get the Hell off of my bridge when you are asked to do so. I do not threaten,” this is the closest Hux will get to making a threat within earshot of his men._

_He feels Mitaka holding his breath as Ren very slowly lifts his saber. Everything Hux has read about the sith before actually working with Ren pointed out that a lightsaber shouldn’t give off heat, at least not a properly constructed one. He feels it now, though, fizzling in the sparks that dance on the crossblades of Ren’s saber. Doesn’t allow himself a glance, knowing his men are watching, that they’ll be terrified of Ren forever if this doesn’t happen now._

_“And if I refuse?”_

_He swears he can hear Ren_ smiling _at him._

 

_That's a first, too. A surprise. Kylo Ren is a wild card, an unpredictable thing on his predictable ship. It shouldn't surprise him to hear a smile in that modulated voice._

_The thought Ren might actually kill him certainly crosses his mind. It doesn’t make a lick of difference._

_This is the battle which will define all future battles for who is in charge on the bridge of the_ Finalizer _. They both know it._

_Or, at least, Hux knows it._

_He still isn’t sure if Ren entirely lacks a capacity for strategy, or just simply chooses to ignore it._

_“You should be afraid of me,” Ren’s low, filtered voice states._

_Hux doesn’t reply. Doesn’t bother with threats. Lids his eyes, and doesn’t waver, looking into the pits where Ren’s pupils hide as he steps closer. He notices they’re nearly the same size as he does, that his mask makes a faint hiss as he breathes. He smells of sweat, but cleanly, closer to the smell of rain than to anything rank and human. Hux is still angry with him, still caught in the audacity of fury, but he can’t help but notice Ren can’t possibly see much in that helmet, that closing distance means he’s effectively cut himself off from the rest of the room._

_He has his total and complete attention._

_Despite himself, Hux gives the ghost of a smile._

_Let him cut him down. The troops will never follow a man who rules only through direct force. Kylo Ren rules a company of seven. Hux commands thousands, has an entire planet under his thumb._

_He sees for a very brief moment, the humor of it, while something like a headache twinges briefly behind his eye._

_What does he have to be afraid of? Death? He’s a soldier._

_The saber lingers, crackling close to his cheek for a long moment, before it hisses and the blade snaps back into its crude casing._

_Ren seems to regard him with a bit of interest, though he’s impossible to read in that mask, his other hand lowering._

(-You read me, you fucking bastard-)

_“Excuse me, General. It’s come to my attention that I must contact Supreme Leader Snoke.”_

_“Permission to leave the bridge granted, Lord Ren.” Hux intones back, unable to let him leave with the last word._

_The mask swivels back to him, voice low and soft._

_“I didn’t ask you for it.”_

_“I’m aware of that.”_

_Hux only gives him a tight not-quite smile because he’s still leaving. Because he’s lost no matter how he wants to cut it. Because he doesn’t seem to realize._

_Ren stares at Lieutenant Mitaka briefly before leaving. The man looks ready to turn into a puddle when he finally looks away, and strides off, the panels of his long tunic trailing behind him._

_The eye of every one of Hux’s troops is on him._

_Hux loves it so much it nearly scares him._

_He doesn’t let a whiff of it show, regarding all around, hands still locked behind his back. A soldier’s posture. One that every trooper in the barracks has down as shorthand for being at ease. It’s important that they translate this as him being at ease, as still being perfectly in control._

_He sees it working._

_He thinks of the ice, the cold clarity of Starkiller base, of_ perfect _control._

_He thinks of Ren’s complete attention._

_“Back to your stations. An exception will be made for the technicians of panel C-22. You are to inform the maintenance shift of the technical issue immediately, and remain on-deck to assist them.”_

_With that, he returns to his own rounds, as though nothing happened._

_Gradually, the men do the same._

_He feels their awe, feels the adoration of some of them._

_They are more united now, than ever before, with him at their head._

_It’s here that he decides Ren is useful no matter how many instrument panels, or shuttles he wrecks._

_The presence of an interloper always pulls a pack closer together._

_Ren stands closer to him the next few times they’re on the bridge, brings himself into his space, seems perhaps intrigued. He singles him out._ Goads _him where he used to only bully technicians and junior officers._

_Hux matches their strides deliberately, refuses to yield, watches him leave when he’s had enough, wrecking something every once in a while, but always out of eyeshot of Hux._

_In the herd, only two things come of being singled out._

_Hux isn’t sure the two need be mutually exclusive, meditates quietly on the scant sith texts he has in his library, from when he didn’t want to walk in to meeting one unprepared, reads the entries of Tarkin’s logs in reference to the right hand of the Emperor, Lord Vader. Thinks of the degrees of the word “passion”. Of the truth in the phrasing Peace Is A Lie._

_Tarkin brought even Vader to heel, he reflects._

(-A disruptive impatience, a skip-)

 

_He lets Ren close the distance, lets him appear to bully him. Takes none of it without retort, without pushing back. Doesn’t let him cut up his bridge where he can see it. Ren follows him as he makes his rounds, strides with him, perfectly matched, unthinkingly synchronized._

 

_He loathes him and enjoys everything his presence symbolizes all at once._

 

_He allows himself the daydream of killing him, of taking Snoke's approval-_

(-another sense of lifting, another skip-)

 

_“-a problem, Lord Ren?” Hux asks, noting the pause in the other’s subdued breathing._

_"Is that a request, General?” Ren asks._

 

_He doesn’t doubt that Ren causes trouble only to get to him, seems to see it reflected in the curve of the mask, in their closeness._

_Hux leans his head towards him, watches the helmet move to follow._

_“No problems. Not a single scratch.” He intones, before turning on his heel._

_Ren pauses,_

_“I'm not actually under your command,” is there a note of surprise in the deep, modulated voice? A hesitation?_

_Hux is flippant, calling even as he strides across the room._

_“My men are trained to perfection, Lord Ren, and you have my comm channel in case of a true emergency. You have full command of the_ Finalizer _until my return from Starkiller Base. Don’t make me say it again. Captain Phasma will assist you if you have any further concerns.”_

_He hears Phasma’s boots click to attention. Feels the men following him with their eyes, with their dread. They’ll be grateful when he does come back. Relieved._

_This is what victory tastes like, he’s sure. Like bumping the thorn in your side into a trusted but subordinate position for the first time, and watching him struggle to compensate._  


_He half expects the bridge to be on fire when he returns, but for the moment it’s entirely worth it watching Ren stare after him in that narrow-sighted bucket and not even come up with a way to respond._

 

_If you want to test a man's character and ability to control himself, you give him a command position._

 

_Dead men aside—and there will almost certainly be some—he's almost curious to see what Kylo Ren will do with his ship._

_As he strides to his shuttle, he wonders briefly, triumphanty what it would be like to have the upstart Kylo Ren on a tight imperial leash, like the sith lord Vader before him._

* * *

 

 

        “You think you can _control me_ ,” Kylo hisses, unsurprisingly angered, “You’d be wrong. Just like you’re wrong about _anyone_ controlling Darth Vader.”

 

Hux breathes in their mingled breaths, feels Kylo take his wrists and squeeze them hard, wrenching them up and over his head, and even disoriented, almost groggy from memories, he wonders if the man even knows what he’s doing, if this is foreplay or just bad luck coincidence.

 

        “ _Wrong_.” Hux intones, almost laughing, because he knows just how much it would get to him, knows how much just his memory had already gotten to him.

 

He tilts his jaw up. Watches Kylo flinch out of the way of being kissed, of having that worried lip bitten by someone else, the forehead leaving his in an instant with a look of alarm, followed by rage, by disgust. The air he breathes in is still warm, and sour from the breath of Ren.

 

Kylo slugs him viciously in the side in response, one hand still locked around his wrists.

 

Hux gasps but doesn’t stop laughing.

 

        “I just think you’d look good on your knees.” There’s a triumph at having gotten to him no matter how ill-advised it is. Poking a Gundark with a stick... ”Hasn’t anyone ever bothered to train the animal out of you?”

 

Kylo actually snarls, pulling him by the hair. And he _bites_ him. _Hard._ Near the back of the neck, past the vital arteries, but above the collar where it will show, ragged fingers clawing and pulling Hux’s hair into disarray.

 

Hux gasps, torn from his own anger. The pain is excruciating. Ren means for it to be. It’s an animal attack. Overly intimate. Warmth floods through him anyway, heats his face. _That_ can’t be helped or hidden with a stern enough look. One transparency he can’t fix is his own skin. If he had his hands, he doesn’t know for sure whether he’d pull Kylo’s teeth from him or bury his hands in his hair. He feels the shape of his lips, around the white-hot agony of his teeth.

 

If he had his limbs under his own control, he’d have him now, he thinks in a flutter of inappropriate elation. A brief noise escapes him.

 

Ren immediately stops grinding his teeth, pulls away to stare at him. It’s in utter disbelief.

 

Hux breathes, steadies himself, shakes the hair out of his eyes.

 

        “Is this the way your interrogations normally go, Lord Ren?” Hux murmurs, at once giddy, angry, and horrified. He really is laughing. He feels his throat throb with every heartbeat.

 

Fury warps Kylo’s features. He holds up a hand, vising a grip around Hux’s throat.

 

Hux tries to breathe.

 

Can’t.

 

There’s fresh blood on Kylo’s lips, and pounding in his ears.

 

Very briefly, the younger man almost looks sick. The one hint that he has no idea his could even _be_ foreplay.

 

_Good._

 

The green uncertainty and horror of him pleases Hux even more.

 

Hux chooses that moment of weakness to move his hands, twisting the grip into a reversal, clasping the wrist holding his.

 

 _“No!_ ” Kylo snarls, invisible hands dragging Hux up the wall by the throat, tearing his fingers off him.

 

He laughs silently anyway, knowing he can see it, knowing there’s no clawing that will remove the unreal hands, that nothing will bother Kylo half as much as him _winning_.

 

Kylo hurls him into the table with a shout of rage.

 

The room darkens, reddens, swims back into focus, _Hurts…_

Hux can hear the sounds of Kylo screaming and hurling his furniture, breaking his second-best plates.

 

        “Of course. Do continue. _That’s_ clearly the best way to convince me of your complete, unfuckable maturity.” Hux snaps hoarsely, trying to drag himself up, to shake off the bruising, the near-winding.

 

An invisible hand closes around his ankle, dragging him over the steel of the floor, so carefully covered with tasteful antique wookie-fur carpetry from the Trandoshan markets near the Hapan cluster. Shards of ceramic dig into his skin on the way back to the livid Kylo Ren, a few scrape his skin with every passing inch of carpet. He makes no noise except a strangled hiss of escaped air.

 

His body snaps up hard, with no supports, arms and legs locked as clearly as if he were in an interrogation chair. Part of Hux has to admire the neatness of it, the calculated discomfort of the pull.

 

This time Kylo makes no attempt to be gentle, pressing his fingers down over Hux’s face, digging for answers.

 

He hears the scream torn from his lips beyond all control, feels his head squeezes as though it’s being crushed.

 

The world goes black.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-writes for what was meant to be the larger portion of this chapter are taking me a tremendously long time to get to. Partially because of graphic content, partially because work has been especially hectic.
> 
> So I split off what has to still be my favorite scene I’ve written to stand alone as chapter three.
> 
>  
> 
> You know Hux is that intellectual douchebag who low-key ships Vader and Tarkin.  
> Just saying.
> 
>    
> Info on Sweet Daddy Grievous stems largely from the now non-canon EU. Wookiepedia is your friend. Mockery of intellectual theses is my friend. Friendship is magic. Magic makes the world go ‘round. Until some asshole with a superweapon decides to make a speech and destroy it, of course.
> 
> Bummer, man…
> 
>  
> 
> (Special warnings for this chapter are included at the chapter footnote to keep spoilers down to a minimum while simultaneously warning people with triggers. IT MIGHT NOT LOOK LIKE IT BUT I WANT PEOPLE SAFE.)

—3—

_The look on Ren’s face is priceless when he enters and spots the table, the spread of fruits over semi-precious stones for effect, the stoppered bottle of golden wine, sees Hux sitting there, reading like an actual human being, with his greatcoat over the back of his throne-like armchair._

_Whatever he was expecting, this clearly wasn’t it._

 

_“Come in, Lord Ren.” Hux greets him easily, setting down the datapad, noting that Ren has traveled with his hood up again, probably glaring at every trooper in his path while he’s at it. That he’s unmasked, but otherwise looks much the same, same tattered cloak, slightly more tattered, same black tunic sweeping the floor._

_For some reason, the lack of a mask still feels as exposing as if he’d walked through the halls of the ship naked. It’s completely unexpected. In the months since seeing him, he would have thought Ren would have found another helmet to hide his youth behind._

_Apparently not._

_He’s just as defiant, as glaring as he ever was without the mask before._

 

_The pretense of food is suddenly entirely unnecessary. The smell of it is still there, though. Better to go along with it anyway. Safer, Hux thinks, allowing himself a long look at his unmasked guest._

 

_Kylo Ren slides the door shut behind him, lingering in the doorway like a dark cloud, frowning slightly with his heavy, slightly sulking lips. He seems to dare him to stare, looks at him boldly, deliberately. He’s still a surprisingly large man, cumbersome and graceless as a teenager, boots striking heavily, hands hanging empty at his sides, clenching and unclenching._

_“You wanted to see me, General?”_

_Hux finds absolutely nothing intimidating about Ren’s brooding bravado, finds his face still incredibly young, meets his eyes easily, coolly._

_“I did. Sit down.”_

_Imperative. Hux doesn’t make requests of rivals. Even ones who’ve returned from the near-dead._

 

_Ren doesn’t move, glancing briefly over the trappings of Hux’s room, with its pale silvers, and minimalist lines while Hux stands and moves back into his kitchen, forking braised whitefish off the stove._

_“I”ve interrupted you.” Ren says quietly, almost thoughtful, still flicking his eyes over the room._

_“It’ll keep.” Hux says, meaning it even though he’s sure the tone is far from repentant, merely thoughtful._

_Let Kylo Ren see he’s not an unskilled person._

_His retention is excellent, worthy of note. He often reads multiple texts at the same time. He’s never found it even slightly confusing. It’s a terribly useful skill in his line of work with all its briefings. Hux prides himself on being something of a reader, even, of being exceptionally well informed._

_“Pallas Authoris, A professor I knew in my academy days. I’m quite enjoying his seminal work on the strategies of the separatist general Grievous during the Clone War era.” Hux says, “Come, Ren. Join me.”_

 

_He carries two plates out, sees Ren’s eyes flick back to him in wariness, glancing at the fish, the greens, the boiled white larvae with mushrooms. He frowns and stares at the floor for a moment, doesn’t join him. Asks instead,_

_“Anything interesting?”_

 

_Stalling. Hux overlooks it._

_“The matter of his personal life.”_

 

_Hux sets both plates down, breaks half of the aromatic fungus cluster in the center of the table into pieces, letting the bruised gills scent the air, remembers how soft and quiet Ren’s voice is without his mask, always something of a surprise._

_He hasn’t missed the person who destroyed valuable equipment on a weekly basis as part of his childish whims. He really didn’t. But there’s something viciously pleasant about how soft-sounding Ren’s voice is without a mask, how vulnerable his large features are, now that he can look at him._ Really _look at him._

_He doesn’t let on, of course._

 

_“Grievous was considered a deity by his people, idolized, and respected even before he became the leader of a droid army.”_

_Hux flicks his eyes to him,_

_“You’ve studied the clone wars no doubt?”_

 

_“My history lessons were unfortunately selective,” Ren replies neutrally, still wearing his suspicious, slightly hostile scowl._

 

_The burn he’d had on his face has healed badly, as though with no medical treatment, no corrective surgeries. It’s turned into an ugly, deep violet slash, biting deep into his jawbone and down his neck beneath the black leather throat-guard. Even unmasked, Kylo’s body is almost completely gloved, a mystery of thoroughly male shapes._

_Ren’s still keeping his distance like this is some kind of trap, glancing intermittently at the holobust of Grand Moff Tarkin, at the silver and black fur rug under the table, with its wood-cased repulsorchairs. Every bit of refinement seems to grate on him like a physical discomfort. That or he’s gone even more feral in his time away from the_ Finalizer.

 

_Hux goes on, maneuvering things across the transparisteel tabletop, shifting the arrangement._

_He notices Ren’s eye on the stun pistol strapped to his thigh. It's only slightly different from the coded-to-his-fingerprint standard pistol he usually carries, something he normally has to peel his gloves off to use, a rendered symbol that can never be used against him. No. if things go according to plan, his gloves will be long gone..._

 

_He turns his back to Kylo deliberately, talks about the long dead…_

 

_“The General Grievous underwent major cybernetic implantation during his lifetime, becoming more machine than man as the course of the war wore on. Authoris utilizes this to point at the nature of the old religions, and of war.”_

 

_Hux unstoppers a flagon of water. Real water. From an actual planet. Not that microprocessed metal-tasting cometmelt the crew settles for, though he privately doubts Kylo Ren has the capacity to tell the difference. Subtlety has never been Ren’s strong point. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out the man was raised by Vornskyrs. Or pirates. That he drank water by lapping it out of a bowl with his tongue like an animal._

_…He notes that that isn’t an entirely displeasing mental image, keeps talking history._

 

_“Like the primitive gods of old, Grievous became more and more like the creatures who worshipped him, while he simultaneously took on the mantles of those who feared him, becoming something between the shape of the machine beneath him, and the dark mirror of the Jedi who opposed him.”_

 

 _Hux pulls out a chair for Kylo. Politeness and decorum are just further weapons: gloves rather than guns._  
  


 

_“This opposition and subjugation extended even to the shape of his military strategies. Ultimately, he stands nearly alone as a type of iconic anti-Jedi figure untouched by the ideals of the Sith Empire. One of the only non-human true military masters who thoroughly subdued and mastered his own alien nature.”_

 

_Ren’s dark eyes glimmered._

_“Not as untouched,” he says softly, finally “Or have I been misinformed that he trained under Darth Tyranus?”_

_His voice is still so very soft. He still isn’t looking at Hux, eyes tracing the line of the ceiling with something in the thousand-mile distance between approval and resentment._

 

_Hux frowned, searching for the name in his head, returning to his seat,_

_“Where did you hear that?”_

 

_Ren finally crosses the room, silent and looming. He pulls his hood back with a quiet flourish, regarding him a moment before replying,_

_“Count Dooku.”_

_He begins peeling off his gloves._

_The motions are as brisk and brutal as everything Hux has come to expect from him. His hands are ghostly pale and massive, square-palmed things, darker on the undersides in patches. The fingers are shapely enough and long. The nails are torn and raw, sharp and uneven, whether from over-work or from secret anxiety is impossible to tell. The ragged, bloodied edges of Kylo’s nails interest him more than he would ever let on._

_Hux forces his face to blankness._

 

_“Unlikely. I own all the personal letters and speeches of Dooku. There’s no record-“_

 

_“Count Dooku trained under the Jedi ways and arts of a Jedi master Yoda.” Ren interrupts, pooling into one of Hux’s chairs, across from him, managing to still look somehow like a child who didn’t want to be forced to the dinner table, “Before leaving the order to become the pupil of Darth Sideous. He fought many Jedi, and trained several of his generals in the art of killing them. Dooku was also known as Darth Tyranus.”_

 

_Hux scowls._

_“I’ve never heard of any of this.”_

_Not from anyone respectably authoritative on the subject, anyway. Sensationalist crackpots, on occasional, which he prides himself on reading as well, because it doesn’t do to have a narrow mind when it comes to propaganda._

 

_“Snoke told me. You have your history tomes and the sith have theirs,” Ren replies with that infuriating air of superiority, of calm. As though has wasn’t actually hinting of Snoke confiding more in him than he did in Hux. As though he wasn’t still very narrowly emerged from a state of disgrace._

_His calm is infuriating—thrilling, and infuriating._

_“You still have trouble believing Lord Vader was one,” Ren notes with something probing in his dark eyes._

_Vader. A sith._

_Kylo hasn’t read_ anything _, with his spotted, backborn face brooding over at him. Hux narrowly avoids scoffing at him._

 

_“Rebel propaganda was rampant during the time of Vader-“_

 

_“You’ve seen what I can do.” Ren says quietly._

_There’s intention in his look as he gestures with a jerk of his head to Hux’s shelf,_

_“Even your books must have covered the way imperial troops fought in inexplicable coordination while under the direct command of Lord Sideous,” he adds._

_The implication of ignorance is incredibly irritating. The aloof arrogance of Ren’s large features without the mask is doubly irritating. There’s nothing to get in the way of reading it._

 

_“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about. I’m also not about to have another argument with you about how exceptionally trained the men of the Empire once were when you clearly believe the answer to everything is an old relic of a religion.”_

 

 

 

_Ren looks briefly annoyed, momentarily poisonous before he calms and speaks more slowly like Hux is an idiot._

_“Vader’s master.”_

 

_Hux narrowed his eyes, mirrors Ren’s steepled fingers deliberately,_

 

_“You mean to suggest to me that you believe the_ Emperor _himself was a part of your… religious cult?”_

 

_Ren’s lips went slightly upwards at the corners, his eyes still humorless,_

_“Why have I been called here, General?” He intoned dully, “I’d like to think it isn’t to hear you tastelessly lecture on history.”_

 

 _“It’s your first night back aboard the_ Finalizer, _is it inappropriate to greet the return of a colleague?”_

 

_“You could have greeted me at the bridge,” Ren intones quietly, still studying him over his steepled hands, gesturing with his chin at the table, “Not gone to… trouble.”_

 

_They've never been friendly, venomously cordial at best._

 

 _“I assure you the act of feeding myself brings me absolutely no_ trouble _, Ren.” Hux replies, a little irritated, pointedly spearing a forkful of mushroom._

 

_“I was under the impression you eat with the common troopers most nights.”_

_Kylo’s tone is languid, disinterested. Even outside the mask he manages to convey a soft edge of contempt for him._

 

_“A custom you typically avoid.” Hux points out before he can stop himself, deferring quickly with the practice of politics, cursing the way Ren gets under his skin like no one else can, “You’re well informed for one who doesn’t frequent the mess hall. Some nights I spend with the men. Others I catch up on my reading.”_

_He pauses, adding with only a hint of backing down, a false humility and humanity:_

_“I was informed the lightspeed jump from your last destination to rendezvous with the_ Finalizer _was an extensive one. You must be hungry.”_

 

_“You’ll be astonished to learn I am not.” Ren replies tonelessly, giving him a hard, somehow bored look._

_Months away, he looks leaner, harder, but still youthful. His dark eyes seem old in his young face, on a close look, slightly skulking, sullen._

 

_Hux shrugs, begins cutting into his fish, picking out the splinters of bone._

_There’s no point in standing on ceremony._

 

_“The amassing army. What did you find?”_

 

_“Only that they hold allegiance to neither the Resistance, nor the First order, rallying behind a creature named Maz Kanata,” Ren replies as he picks up a piece of the fungus roll despite his assertions of his lack of hunger, begins pulling paper-thin wisps of it off with his fingers, studying them as they flutter to his untouched plate._

_Hux does his best to ignore it._

 

_“And their intentions to the First Order?”_

 

_Ren frowns at the wisps._

_“Retaliation,” He says, wetting a finger with his tongue._

_It’s a distractingly self-absorbed gesture._

 

_“What the devil for?” Hux mutters._

 

_“One of the planets we sought the map to Skywalker on,” Ren says, dragging his finger through the filaments, studying his fingertips._

 

 _Hux sighs. This_ would _be the planet with the scavenger girl._

 

_Ren looks up at him hard, something briefly spasming over his features. Anger perhaps. The display of passion is unsettling in his previously withdrawn features. It lights up his melancholy face with a spark of hard, unstable passion, insistence._

_Will._

_“Supreme Leader has purged those feelings from me and set me right. The scavenger means nothing to me.”_

 

_“I’m glad to hear it. You’ll notice I made no comment,” Hux remarks._

 

_The liveliness in Ren’s eyes is entrancing the way a ravenous flame is. It embers down quickly into brooding, resentment._

_“You were thinking it.”_

 

_Hux narrows his eyes._

_“You’ll stay out of my head,” The threat in his voice is soft, but heartfelt._

_He doesn’t need Kylo Ren seeing how distracting he is._

 

_“I wasn’t in your head, General. It was obvious.”_

_For the first time Ren’s lips lift in the ghost of a real flicker of amusement, and it’s… fundamentally odd, seeing him there, with his dark eyes, his dark hair on display. Odd that he hasn’t bothered to replace his helmet. He peels off a piece of the fungus loaf, and sets it to his tongue, not breaking the blank eye contact._

_Hux forces himself to chew, to focus on his food, and not to think about the flickering pink inside of Kylo Ren’s wide mouth, what he could do to it._

 

_“Will there be any other obvious features you’ll feel the need to inform me of this evening?” he asks, neutrally, as if he’s at a state dinner._

 

_“That I didn’t know whatever this is was a matter for the entire evening?”_

_Ren’s eyes are so dark they catch the light in the ghost of hisamusement, and Hux_ wonders _suddenly and deeply if Ren has read his mind already, if he’s only here to laugh at him, to call him a pervert, to completely underestimate the depths of his hunger. He wasn’t sure of that appetite himself until Ren turned back up with his lush, youthful face on quiet display, his looming insolence._

_“I’ll be sure to let you know if anything else comes up.” the knight adds._

 

_“I’m sure you will.” Hux mutters, good mood gone._

_He jabs one of the eyes from his fish, eating it, yanking the tongue out from behind the needle teeth with another quick motion._

 

_Ren watches this and tears another paper-thin filament of the fungus loaf off, studies it on his fingertip. He breathes gently, sending it fluttering up into the air, over the table. Hux is briefly annoyed, briefly captivated. Ren’s thin fingers pick up one of the boiled sticky grubs, rolling it slightly between his fingertips. It’s of size with one of the joints of his fingers, fat and white as a small cigar. He notices his torn fingernails again._

_“I’m presuming this is about the renegade army.”_

 

_“Being presumptuous always was a talent of yours, Ren.” Hux replies, sipping his water, and cracking the fish’s skull, picking it open. He eats the brain, takes a piece of fruit absently from the center bowl even though he’s no longer very hungry, stares at it for a while until he feels more in control of himself, more capable of staring at Ren without seeming overt in staring at him._

 

_Ren eats the grub, apparently oblivious to Hux’s watching. He tastes his fingertips, and studies them. He brings them up to his nose to smell. He doesn’t so much as touch the fish or the greens, doesn’t so much as taste the water._

_“..You have plans for the renegade problem,” He says finally, sucking the starchy stickiness from his thumb._

 

_“What gives you that impression?” Hux asks, crossing his legs despite himself._

 

_“Because you have plans for every problem,” Ren replies evenly._

 

_With his head hunkered down, it’s easy to see how broad his shoulders are._

Brute _, Hux thinks._

 

_The knight actually picks the tendril of spiceleaf off the top of his fish with his fingers and eats it as though he’s merely tasting it, licks his fingers while looking down at the clear, hovering pane of the tabletop._

 

_“And you take issue with my methods?” Hux asks softly, feeling anger rise in him for all he refuses to show of it._

 

_“You’ll be relieved to hear my taking issue with your methods has yet to put a stop to any of them, General,” Ren replies with an ironic cocking inclination of his head to the side, peeling another paper-thin gill off the loaf with his fingers, and studying it._

 

_Hux grimaces at his plate, forks a tendril of green, decides very hard not to rise to that._

_“The mercenary nature of the group presents difficulties.”_

 

_“Then this is a personalized debriefing,” Ren notes._

_Hux glances over him, watches him lick another filament off his fingertip. Says nothing. He still hasn’t decided how he feels about the scar running over Kylo’s nose and down his cheek, biting hard into the angle of his jaw, whether it suits him or not. He still isn’t sure Kylo’s face in general suits his impression of him, but that_ arrogance _, that teasing friction, that soft, threatening loom…_

_Ren is still Ren._

_Hux decides._

 

_He pulls a vial from his pocket, stands, and takes the glass jug of wine, swirling it for effect in the glass._

_“The meal doesn’t seem to your liking, I’m sorry.”_

 

_A flicker of something crosses Kylo’s face, narrows his dark eyes slightly._

_“Are you?” he murmurs._

 

_“I was unaware you cling to the jedi tenants of the sacredness of life and refuse meats,” He’s proud of himself for the look on Ren’s face, proud of the research._

 

 _“…I follow no such compunctions,” Kylo replies frowning with his eyes narrowed, “I’m not a jedi. I don’t eat_ cooked _meat.”_

 

_That throws even Hux. He gives a brief huff of show-laughter as though it’s a joke, sees Kylo Ren’s mouth tighten in that smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s entirely impossible to tell if he’s joking or not, entirely too plausible seeing him with bloodied mouthfuls._

 

_“I can’t say I know a great deal of the preparation of raw flesh.” Does Ren react? Perhaps a little?_

_“Perhaps you’ll share a recipe with me,” Hux saves evenly._

 

_Kylo gives another bobbing, subtle inclination of his head that could mean almost anything, watching him much too carefully and intently._

_“This is blossom wine, said to be a favorite of the late Emperor Palatine himself. I’m unaware of any sith teachings of temperance.”_

 

_“There are none,” Kylo replies, looking again very briefly amused, “Although I’m not precisely a sith either.”_

 

_Hux briefly, irritably wonders what the Hell that’s supposed to mean, continues on with his prepared speech._

_“This particular vintage is fine, though it carries the curious effect of distilling a poison in it, harvested from the plants it takes for its source.” Hux lies smoothly, taking Kylo’s glass as well as his own, “I thought it particularly appropriate for your return to the_ Finalizer.”

 

_“You make it difficult to know when you intend a compliment, General.” But Kylo still seems in good humor because he lets that slide, rests his head in his hands, fingers sliding up into his hair, over his temples. His eyes flick over Hux with no hint of concealment or subtlety, as though appraising him in some new light._

_He makes no move to stop Hux from filling his glass._

 

_Hux breathes an inner sigh, splashing a dash of the black liquid from the vial into the bottom of each glass. He pulls two thumb-sized violet crystals from the bottom of his fruit dish, pours a little more than half a glass of the honey-colored wine over top, fizzing and dying down into a deep candied red._

_Kylo accepts his glass back. Makes no objection when Hux’s fingers touch his, instead meets his eyes with that faint arrogance, that sense that somewhere behind the dark he’s laughing at him. Hux dares to think very quietly that maybe the advantage is his, that maybe,_ maybe _there’s something of a respondent perversion in Kylo Ren even though he’s seen him drop everything to chase an utterly worthless, albeit well-formed girl._

_It would certainly make things easier if there was something similar in Kylo Ren to what was in him._

_It also wouldn’t stop him if there wasn’t. Between wine and pistol, he’d find a proper advantage somewhere._

_But Kylo doesn’t pull away, seems instead to almost spur him on with his dark, quietly mocking eyes, which secretly gets Hux’s blood burning a little hotter._

_It’s been a long time since he successfully identified another person with his particular flaw of appetite. Some part of him hopes, even if the vessel of that respondent feeling were to be found in a feckless brute like Kylo Ren, who still isn’t quite handsome despite it all, who still has a sort of masked blankness to his exposed face._

_Hux lets his fingers drop after the moment’s contact._

_No need to reveal before he’s entirely confident of the evening’s direction going where he intends it to._

 

_“And the reason for the rocks, General?” Kylo asks._

 

_“Old family custom. A ward against drunkenness and other such mental weaknesses. If you believe such things.”_

 

_Kylo regards him, not quite smiling, not quite anything, eyes like holes in his head._

_“And do you?”_

 

_“No. Do you?”_

 

_Again, that tightening of the corner of the mouth, that quiet, soft-spoken condescension, that ease and restless, roving not-ease._

_“I only believe what I find for myself.”_

_Kylo’s voice is low, and the light catches in his dark eyes. He’s not quite a handsome man. That somehow doesn’t matter any more than the rich, cryptic darkness of the line does._

 

_“And_ you _follow a path of dark sorcery.” Hux mutters._

 

 _“_ Careful _, General.” He almost sounds like he’s mocking him, syllables crisping up into old imperial. He sounds close to laughing at him, a glimmer in his eye, a bare quirk to the side of his mouth, and Hux wants him for it, as keenly as a flash of anger, steels himself._

 

_Hux raises his glass to him._

_“To the visions of the Supreme Leader, the prevailing of the first order, and the legacy of your Emperor, and your Lord Vader.”_

 

_He sees the last one surprise Kylo, blanking all the amusement from his young face. He seems dark, brooding again, looking at him with suspicion, as though surprised Hux knew his feelings about Vader, watching him sharply and as closely as he did after his comment about the dietary habits of the Jedi. He raises the glass gravely after the moment of hesitation, solemn and serious._

_“To Lord Vader.”_

_And he drinks deep and hard, with an abandon Hux certainly wasn’t expecting after his pickiness with his food. He hears the clatter of the stone at the bottom of the glass hitting Kylo’s lips, sips his own far less dramatically._

 

 _…He probably isn’t even_ tasting _the vintage, Hux notes with irritation._

_He feels the bubbling of the fake antidote all the way down into his stomach while Ren slams the glass back down hard enough to crack it._

 

_The young lord meets his eye again, tilts his head slightly, and spits the gem back into his open palm, stonefaced._

_“Too sweet.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \----------
> 
>  
> 
> TRIGGER NOTES:
> 
> Tags include “Space Food is Weird” for people used to highly processed food and don’t like hearing about fish eyes, raw meat, or watching people play with their food.
> 
> (Gentle Reminder one of our villains was co-raised by a wookie.)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, “Dubiously Date-Rape Drug Use” and “Rape Intent”.
> 
> To reiterate, Hux is still a conniving bastard who takes every advantage he can get in the seduction process and I still haven’t found anyone else who makes him this nasty which...kind of worries me. Sorry.
> 
>  
> 
> Also some of that "Imperialist Pro-Humanism" in Hux's attitudes about General Asthmatic Coat Rack.
> 
> Stay safe, folks the next one’s a doozie.


End file.
